This Week in Global Health » Weekly News Update from the Stimson Center’s Global Health Security Program.



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Towards a Global Strategy for Sustainable Health Security » In the last seven years, the world's wealthiest nations and a new generation of philanthropists have invested unprecedented resources into campaigns against diseases that disproportionately affect the developing world (including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria). Such initiatives frequently imply -- or state explicitly -- that programs developed to address specific disease threats will benefit public health generally by building a "dual-use" infrastructure. What has the recent major public health investment by governments, philanthropists, and public-private partners accomplished in terms of sustainable capacity to detect and respond to general disease threats? The Stimson Center Global Health Security program focuses on how parallel (and sometimes competing) campaigns to combat specific diseases contribute to sustainable global health security. READ MORE »

Global Health Governance » In 2005, member states granted the World Health Organization dramatically expanded authorities to investigate public health emergencies of international concern, placing the need to contain transnational disease threats over national sovereignty. This sweeping new framework reflects a growing emphasis on truly global approaches to health security rather than limited international disease-control measures to protect trade and travel. Are these governance structures sufficient to contain rapidly emerging disease threats, especially when it is not in the economic best interests of a nation to offer full and rapid disclosure? Can the WHO serve as a central clearinghouse to an increasingly decentralized network of global health actors? The Stimson Center Global Health Governance project seeks practical, flexible governance models for meeting global health security needs without sacrificing technically sound public health goals. READ MORE »

Disease, Defense, and Diplomacy » In the past five years, the U.S. global health policy focus has shifted dramatically. Debates about the moral imperative and soft diplomacy have given way to a security-footed paradigm in which "forward-deployed disease surveillance assets" gather intelligence to combat "transnational disease threats," and the global HIV/AIDS crisis represents a threat to U.S. national security. State Department officials with ambassadorial rank, rather than U.S. health agencies, coordinate multi-billion dollar programs to combat HIV/AIDS in developing nations and to build global defenses against pandemic influenza. The new Stimson Center Disease, Defense, and Diplomacy project identifies challenges and pragmatic solutions to balancing the competing priorities of the public health, diplomatic, and security communities operating in this new global health security environment. READ MORE »